Saturday, May 9, 2015

I
get hundreds of emails a month from people asking questions on closing,
objections, you name it, and one that I consistently get time and again is the
frustration on trying to close deals with people who utilize the “old boy
network” or cannot seem to get away from their current vendor. A lot of salespeople just give in and come to
the conclusion that you “can’t win them all.”
No, but you can win some of the bigger deals you think are lost to this
dilemma if you just appeal to the buyer’s common sense, which I did one day by
accident out of anger and frustration.

True
Story: After numerous presentations to this
company’s committees, board, VPs, you name it, it all came down to the owner
(which would have been nice to know ahead of time, but I was naïve at this
point, and willing to present to anyone who would listen) and what he thought.
The committee said they would present it and “get back to me.” Well, rest
assured I had created value, created excitement, developed rapport with
everyone in the process, everyone but the decision maker and now I was going to
have these people make the presentation to the man who signed their
check? Do you think they would be able to convey the type of excitement I
would? Answer the objections in the detail required? Of course not. So, not leaving it up to chance, I asked to
make the presentation myself and fortunately was allowed to do so.

Well,
after spending an hour or so displaying the many benefits and features of my
sales training program, developing rapport with the decision maker, getting
agreement from all involved, we turned to the owner for his answer or his
thoughts. He paused for a second, then gave me his answer, an answer which he
felt would end the presentation, placate me and send me on my way.

“Mark,
everything you said makes perfect sense and would be a great addition to the
training we receive currently, but I have been with Rick (current trainer) for
almost five years and we have been happy thus far, and I am unsure if we can
fit BOTH programs into the budget.”

Doing
my homework prior, I knew that the sales team was unhappy with the results from
Rick’s company, but he was a good friend of the owner and the results he was
getting were satisfactory enough for him to keep his job. The sales managers
had voiced their opinion as far as they could without jeopardizing THEIR
careers and it was up to me to seal the deal. I knew that the budget was NOT
the concern, it was his friendship and loyalty, and he needed a shove in the
direction of common sense and responsibility, regardless of loyalty. So here is
how I moved the deal to the closing table and combated the “friendship/loyalty”
dilemma:

ME: “Mr. Smith, let
me ask you a question if I may?”

OWNER: “Sure go ahead,” as he leaned back in his
seat.

ME: “I
respect the loyalty to your friend and his training company and what they have
done up to this point. But we agreed that what I can offer in the form of
training can help take your sales team to another level in performance, and we
all know that means increased profits, and you agreed that our program makes
sense to what you want to accomplish, is that also correct?”

I essentially recapped all the benefits he would
receive by going with our company, and began building my case appealing to
basic common sense, especially with an audience present. I wanted to make the
case so compelling that the decision on HIS end was a low risk, "no
brainer” decision. It had to be an OBVIOUS choice, not an ambiguous one.

OWNER: “Certainly, I
think we are in agreement on those issues.”

THE CLOSE

ME: “Well, that being
the case Mr. Smith, shouldn’t your first loyalty be to your company and
its financial well being?”

BANG!!!!
That’s it. That’s all you need to say regarding their loyalty to their current
vendor. It is very powerful, VERY thought provoking and common sense always
comes into play.

Needless
to say after making that statement and looking at him with a sense of concern
and genuine interest in his company, we signed the deal that night to SHARE the
training with Rick. Within 45 days it
became obvious my competitor’s techniques and strategies were antiquated and
subsequently they were let go and we received the contract for the full
training. The results were astounding and we got a great reference and MORE
business.

Remember,
ask the prospect what is more important, loyalty to the vendor or to his
own company. I think we all know the answer.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

The next marketing technique I want to
talk about right now is what I call FREE money, a marketing technique so
magnetic and effective it shocks me that I rarely see businesses and websites
doing it. Essentially what you do here is tap your database, create some action
and get them to visit you and open their wallet.

At one of my bar establishments back
in the late 90s, once a month I would do a mailer to my database (yes … even
bars keep a database to market to, the good ones anyway). In that mailer I
would enclose a photocopy of a $10.00 bill with my picture on it and this
$10.00 was good at my establishment for anything on the menu, but it had a
deadline, usually 2 weeks after they received it. I would send out about 1,000
of these mailers, with the whole direct mail campaign costing me roughly
$400.00 in postage and photocopying (remember, stamps were only 32 cents back
then). Of that 1,000, I would get about 300 that took me up on that offer,
which was $3,000 in perceived value, but my profit margins were so high that
the true, real cost to me was more along the lines of about $400 in total
product I had to give away. So all told, I was financially into this marketing
campaign a total of $800.00. That’s $400 for the postage and printing and $400
for the beverages and food I gave away with the $10 coupons. My sales? Each
person on average spent $20 above the $10 coupon, which generated $6,000 in
revenue for me, and taking out the $800, it made me $5,200 in profit. Why?
Simple. When people have money in their pocket, they have got to spend it and
with deadline attached it made it that much more enticing. (MORE GREAT TECHNIQUES HERE)

My
wife, Paula, gets all excited when her favorite shoe store sends her a $10 gift
certificate every now and then. She bugs the heck out of me to take her there
so she can use it and the damn gas to get there costs more than $10, and then
she ends up spending another $300-$500 when she is there. All for a simple $10 gift
certificate!!

How
you word it is crucial as well. People appreciate gift certificates more than
they appreciate coupons and when you do send it out, let your customer know it
is to thank them for their business, and not just anyone is getting this
special gift. By personalizing it and wording it as a certificate, you
immediately increase traffic by 28%. You can also use this technique for your
website by emailing your best customers and including a certificate or special
code, and by doing this once a month, you will add a MINIMUM of an additional
15% in revenue to your bottom line. Free money in your customers' pocket with a
deadline attached is a very powerful magnet in drawing them in to do business
with you.

Monday, May 4, 2015

The BIGGEST WASTE of money I see spent by entrepreneurs and business owners is promoting their logo, picture or slogan. Unless your Coke, Pepsi, Bud or some other multi-billion dollar company with hundreds of millions to spend on branding, than marketing your logo, etc. will NOT generate a buying decision. How many real estate agents have you called from bill boards because of their picture? How many restaurants have you gone to because of their SLOGAN? We buy based on what excites US and if your marketing does NOT have a solid call to action that focuses on your prospects favorite radio station, WIFM (Whats In It For Me) they will change the channel ASAP to your competitors. Go here to learn more about WIFM

The absolute WORST CASE of advertising and of the example above I just mentioned is in the magazine Ocean Drive. A luxury magazine here in Miami with ads that focus almost entirely on pictures, slogans and cleverness....and ZERO on getting me to take action. EVERY SINGLE AGENCY IN THAT MAGAZINE SHOULD BE FIRED. I saw one ad for the Shore Club Hotel that took up TWO FULL PAGES. One page said Shore Club in little words. The other page said Relax. I turned the page and immediately forgot about them.

OK, enough venting. Time for an exercise;

What
I want you to do right now is get a piece of paper and a pen and for the next
60 seconds write down words or phrases that you think best describe why people
would want to business with you. Write down one word at a time preferably, but
if you can think of phrases that best describe why customers would want to do business
with you, go with that also.

What
I want to do now is go over a series of words and phrases and look down at your
sheet and see if any of these were written down to describe why anyone would want to do business with
you. Here we go …

Great customer service

The biggest

The Best

#1

Go the extra mile

Lowest price

Friendly service

Reliable service

Best price

Dependable

Professional

Smartest

Experienced

Outstanding

Amazing

Established

I think you get the
idea. Take a look at your paper. Do you have these words written down or words
and phrases like these? If so, put a big X through them, as this is what I call "Marketing Poison",and you want to strike these words
from your marketing vocabulary. (more on "Marketing Poison")

These words and phrases and those like
them, have no impact on your customers' buying decisions whatsoever.

They
never have and they never will. Why? Simple. Your customers see these words
every single day from almost every piece of marketing they encounter and they
have become desensitized to them. Think for a second how many ads you see in
the newspaper, hear on the radio and see on websites where the business talks
about how great their customers
service is, how dependable they are,
how they are the biggest, or #1 in this or #1 in that. So what? How
is that benefiting me as your potential customer? It doesn’t.

But
that is just one of the mistakes most businesses make when they are marketing
their product or service, they compound the problem by trying to be all things
to all people and attempting to appease everyone. They do this by promoting
their own vanity and hot buttons, and generalizing their marketing rather than
trying to zero in on what is important: the hot buttons of the customer,
enticing them to buy.

Friday, May 1, 2015

One great marketing idea I took from
the pages of Niemann Marcus, the
high end retailer who on occasion will sell an item that is off the charts
expensive or over the top flamboyant. One such item I saw for sale a few years
back was when Southfork Ranch, the home of the fictitious Ewing Family of the
hit show Dallas, put up for sale square foot sections of the property for $25
or $250 a piece I can’t remember, most likely $250. And you got a cool certificate authenticating
ownership. This was back in the late 70s when the show was at its peak and they
sold these like hot cakes. I am sure they came with a million restrictions.... but
how cool was it to show your friends a certificate that you owned a piece of
Southfork? And the funny thing is, is that any business online or offline can
copy this outrageous marketing technique.

When I had a restaurant a few years
back I put a $2,500 martini on the menu that came with a diamond at the bottom.
Did I sell any? Heck no, not during the recession we were in but the publicity
I got was worth 50 X that. Prior to opening our doors for the very first
time, I ran a few ads creating the
excitement for our Grand Opening and being in a small, ski resort town in New
Hampshire any “outside the box” news usually got folks attention and got them
talking. Well, you can imagine the fuss my $2,500 martini caused and all the
people dying to see who would be the first to purchase it and from this fuss
came publicity and more publicity and thus traffic to the restaurant just to see it on the menu. That’s
right, people came in JUST TO SEE IT ON THE MENU and of course while they were
there they gave me their business.

While my $2,500 martini was a great marketing ploy it paled in comparison to
Neiman Marcus and their marketing creativity and the things that they sold;

*How about a LIVE Black Angus Bull with a sterling silver grill
for a pre-inflation price of $1,925 (1952)?

*A suit of armor for $20,000.

*A $10 million zeppelin with a cabin for 20.

*A $1.7 million outer space trip 63 miles in the air in one of Richard
Branson’s Virgin Galactic Spaceships.

*A $1 million Jack Nicholas designed golf
course in your back yard(TONS more ideas right here www.InsaneMarketing.net )

How about the $100 burger or $10,000 dessert that can be had in Manhattan? You
are not going to sell many, if any (if you do, that’s a NICE profit margin), but
the publicity and bragging rights you can ascertain from this is immense! For
example if you own a tanning salon, have a tanning lotion private labeled
exquisitely for your company only, and then sell it for $250 and see what
people say. How many people will ask about it? Everyone! And don’t be surprised
if you sell a few. I am serious.

What can you sell that will generate shock appeal, publicity and get people
talking? Create a product or service, add some outrageous price to it and
promote the hell out of it. What can be
your $2,500 martini or $100 hamburger?

Thursday, April 30, 2015

I was on a site for women’s handbags a while back researching ad copy ideas for
a client and was drawn into the sales pitch and description of a particularly
high priced bag. They did a great job describing it, creating emotion within
the reader, me, and more importantly creating value before they led me into the
price. While doing this, however, they mentioned the lady who created the
design for the bag and her name was set up as a hyperlink, so guess what I
did?? I clicked on it and it took me
away from the sales pitch and to her profile and guess what happened? I
started to read it and as I did I forgot all about the handbag and any
emotion or excitement they had created had dissipated.They
had set the stage for me to make a buying decision and snagged it right away from me and more
importantly snagged the sale out from underneath themselves. And the sad thing
is, it is happening everyday for this particular site and they have no way of
no knowing because they cannot see the feedback or hear or see the client walk
away. They simply disappear with the click of the mouse and they are none the wiser
about the lost sale.

You need to treat your website and its sales components
like you would treat a direct mail campaign; draw them in with an exciting
statement or offer, establish credibility of who you are then hone in on the
WIFM, what’s in it for me mentality for each product you sell, and then design
the marketing verbiage around each and every one of your products to answer
that question. I am not saying that you
don’t want a nice looking site, but looking nice will not pay the bills and
fatten your wallet, generating sales is all about appealing to your customers
hot buttons then creating ad copy and offers that push them to a buying
decision and that is with every piece of marketing you disseminate to the
public. Remember, when making a sales pitch onwebsite, do NOT give them any reason to click elsewhere and for crying out
loud, leave out hyperlinks in all your sales pitches unless it pushes
them to a call to action.